Leaderboard Zone

Google-powered ads, which have become a mainstay on Web sites, are now being played on at least one radio station in Detroit. And like so many other Motor City radio products, it won’t be long before they go global. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts last week that the search giant plans to make its radio-ad business generally available within three months.

This is something I do not understand. How can Google integrate Adsense with radio? The whole point of Adsense is that it looks at the context of the current content, and places ads relevant to that content.

How is this going to happen with radio? Talk shows are usually about politics or local issues, not about some sort of product. And the majority of the rest of the radio is music. What is Google thinking? Oh, I can see it now.. the DJ plays Bob Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”:

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government
The man in the trench coat
Badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off

And after doing some audio analysis, speech recognition, and keyword matching, will Google have the radio station play the following ads?

[Got a bad cough? Try Robitussin for all your cold needs]
[Laid off? Lose your job? Come to Monster.com to find a new career!]
[Interested in trench coats and other men’s fashion? Try the Men’s Wearhouse for all your professional attire. You’ll look good.. I guarantee it!]

I mean, really! This is what Google is planning? Because that is what Adsense is, right?

Otherwise, this is just Google becoming an even larger advertising company.. it has nothing to do with relevance, algorithms, or any of the other fundamentals that make Google different from, say, Clear Channel.

To add to JG’s comments, the value of a real-time bidding system for AdWords and AdSense is that feedback (clickthroughs, conversions, and now “invalid clicks”) can be used to set bids, adjust prices, etc. However, there’s limited feedback in radio. You get a few callers and a few people who interact via stations’ web sites, but that’s about it.

Broadcast radio is dying because people are listening to it less and less. Even if this makes radio stations more profitable it will only delay the inevitable, that people use satellite, their ipods, or listen to music online in a totally different format. I don’t see why they are targeting broadcast at all.

And I agree with CPCcurmudgeon, it is much harder to measure ROI for radio ads.

This is like they are firing a warning shot to tv advertising that they are gunning for them. All very weird.